Paul Petrone’s new book, “Monday After Mania: WWE’s Annual Reckoning Since 1993,” will change how you look at WrestleMania season forever. Instead of backstage gossip or star ratings, Petrone treats the Monday Night Raw after WrestleMania as the company’s true Judgment Day. Using real-time fan reactions of boos, chants, dead silences, and ratings spikes to deliver a ruthless fan report card for every season since 1993.
It’s clinical but never dry, written with the sharp eye of a lifelong fan who remembers exactly how every crowd sounded. The book wastes no time proving its thesis. The opening chapter on WrestleMania 9 and its chaotic Raw After perfectly captures the early-’90s desperation of the steroid trial, collapsing Hulkamania, and Hogan’s absurd title win at the “world’s largest toga party.”
Petrone also spotlights Jerry “The King” Lawler’s debut and the instant “Burger King” chants that followed, showing that Raw in 1993 wasn’t yet a narrative machine, yet still delivered the moments that mattered. Fast-forward to the 2020s, and the formula still shines as WrestleMania 40 earns an A+ for its historic Cody finish. At the same time, WM 41 and 42 receive honest B+ and B grades that praise strong undercards but call out spectacle overload and mixed crowd reactions with refreshing honesty.
This is a book WWE probably doesn’t want you to read because it strips away their spin and holds every season accountable to the only metric that matters, which is whether the audience actually bought what they were trying to sell. Petrone clearly loves wrestling too much to excuse its failures, but he’s even-handed enough to praise when the company gets it right. Whether you’re a lapsed fan catching up on the last three decades or a diehard who’s watched every Raw, this book won’t disappoint.
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